Sizzle

“What about emotionally? Was your home as comfortable in that way as it was financially?” she asked. She’d met more than one person who hid behind evasion and had grown up in a difficult home. Having money didn’t always mean that someone had an easy upbringing.

“It was good. My family are all Cajun or French so there is a lot of passion and tempers flaring, but I always knew I was loved.” His voice revealed the truth of those words. And she thought about how he’d been in the kitchen. There was something very controlled about Remy. She doubted he’d be the sort of man who’d let passion for a woman interfere with his desire to win.

She needed to remember that.

“Spoiled?” she asked.

“A little. But I can’t blame my parents for that. I just like to get my way,” he said.

“Like you did in the competition this afternoon. Doing what you thought was best instead of what I told you.”

He shrugged again. “I have to give my all in the kitchen. Even if that means making other chefs mad.”

“Is that why you are between gigs right now? Do you have a hard time taking orders?” she asked.

He rubbed the bridge of his nose and pulled his arm off the back of the seat to his lap. She guessed that she’d asked a question that cut too close to whatever he was hiding from her. Whatever his emotional vulnerable point was. Interesting.

“Perhaps,” he said. “Mostly it’s that I have been praised for my cooking but by those who’ve known me my entire life. I want to know if I’m really good.”

“Why? Did something happen to shake your confidence?” she asked.

“Did something happen to you?” he asked, focusing that intense blue gaze of his on her. “I bet it did. No one goes from Paris to a cupcake bakery without a big event forcing the change.”

“True. I guess we both have our secrets,” she said. “But I will tell you this, I’ve never doubted my ability to put a good dish on the table. I know when I’m done cooking that the person eating my food is going to be blown away.”

“Do you?”

“Yes. I think you must be the same,” she said. “Otherwise why would you come here?”

“Why indeed,” he said.

She leaned back against the leather seat and looked out the window again. This time the answers she sought had nothing to do with her, but with him. “You want external praise.”

“Don’t you?” he asked.

“I guess. Really I want a chance to get back what I once had,” she said, speaking from the heart.

As much as the success she’d had with Sweet Dreams validated her as a chef and businesswoman, she wanted to know that she had the chops to go head-to-head with the best cooks in the world. She’d competed years ago to get that original role in the kitchen of a top Parisian chef, and then she’d thrown it away for love. No, that wasn’t right. There hadn’t been love between them, but there had been passion and danger, she thought. It had been very dangerous to give in to her passions.

Yes. That was what had been missing from her life. That was what she was afraid she’d never find again. Her passions for living and for cooking. It was only when she embraced both, that she really did have balance. Yet that was the very thing that frightened her the most.

“You look like you just solved the problems of the world,” he said.

“Nah, just the problems of one woman. It’s funny how you find answers when you didn’t know there was a question,” she said.

“What did you figure out, ma chère?” he asked, lifting his arm against the back of the seat again and touching the side of her face.

No way was she sharing the truth with him, but she knew that if she were going to reclaim her passion in the kitchen she’d have to reclaim it in her life as well. She needed to figure out a way to balance her personal passions with her professional ones and a part of her felt like maybe she could do that with Remy. But another part of her warned that the last time she’d attempted this she’d been burned. Could she survive another dance of passion with a chef?

REMY HAD COME TO COOK but he found most of his time so far had been taken up with thinking about the sexy little woman seated next to him. Her perfume was elusive but tempting, and he found the scent distracting as they worked next to Chef Ramone in the kitchen. Remy shook his head, forcing his attention back to the cutting board in front of him. The executive chef moved off to take care of an emergency on the other side of the kitchen and Staci moved closer to Remy.

“He’s so low-key I almost don’t believe he could prepare these spectacular dishes.”

“I know what you mean. I’ve never met a chef who doesn’t yell,” Remy said. “Certainly never worked with one who didn’t.”

“Me either. Even Alysse and I yell back and forth at the bakery.”

“That’s your partner?” he asked.

“Yes. She’s funny. Usually we’re just telling each other stories from the night before or I’m bossing her around,” Staci said.

“Do you do that a lot?” he asked. He’d finished dicing the vegetables he’d been assigned to work with by the chef. Staci still had half her pile to go. He reached over and took the carrots from her.

She smiled her thanks. “Yes, I do boss her around a lot. But not just her, anyone who needs my advice.”

“Do I need it?”

“I don’t know. A part of me wants to say yes, but I don’t know you well enough. You’re wicked with that knife.”

“Knife skills are one of the best weapons in a chef’s arsenal,” he said.

“Yes, they are, Remy,” Chef Ramone said returning to them.

“You’ve done well with the task I assigned you. Ready to assemble our dish?”

Remy found the same comfort of working in the kitchen with Staci and Chef Ramone as he did working in his own kitchen back home. It was telling he thought that this was home for him even though he was thousands of miles from New Orleans.

And he wasn’t sure he could find his own way. Staci messed with his concentration and that intrigued him. He’d had affairs before, he was too passionate and his sexual drive too high for him not to. But he’d never allowed himself an affair with another chef. It seemed to him that life was best served by keeping his personal and professional lives separate.

Now, he wasn’t sure. He watched her dip her spoon into the sauce she was preparing and stared at her full lips and saw her eyes sparkle. He suppressed a groan. In his mind he moved closer and leaned in to taste the sauce but not from the spoon, from her.

“Want a lick?” she asked.

He snapped back to the present and nodded. He wanted way more than a lick but that would be a good place to start. She held the spoon out to him, but instead of taking it from her hand, he wrapped his hand around her wrist and drew her to him.

He brought their hands up and then he leaned down to run his tongue over the sauce, keeping eye contact with her the entire time. Her lips parted and her tongue darted out again, just as it had before. Her pupils dilated and there was a rosy flush that climbed up her face.

“Delicious,” he said, letting his hand drop and stepping back to his station.

“Thanks,” she said, her voice thready, husky even and he knew that in the game of flirtation, he’d just won the round.

It was at that moment that he knew he wasn’t leaving California without taking Staci Rowland to his bed. He’d thought that she’d distract him from cooking but he was coming to realize that if he didn’t have her, it would be more of a distraction.

She was temptation incarnate and he was from The Big Easy. He’d been raised to indulge his passions in the kitchen and out and even though this would be the first time that he combined the two, he found the anticipation exquisite.

“Remy?” she asked.

He glanced over at her and saw the confusion in her eyes. And for a second he wondered if he’d misjudged her but then she licked her lips again and he smiled. He knew that he hadn’t.

Staci seemed as if she were dealing with some issues in this competition, much like the rest of them. And though tonight it was just the two of them, he knew that whatever knowledge he gleaned about her would be useful for the rest of the weeks ahead.

He closed the gap between them. Put his hands on her shoulders and leaned down as he drew her closer. He brushed his lips over hers and tasted the buttery sweetness of the sauce but also the indescribable taste of Staci. It was unique, mysterious and so addictive he didn’t want to stop kissing her.

Yet he knew he had to. He stepped back and saw her watching him with an unfathomable expression. He’d shocked her. Hell, he’d surprised himself because he’d thought the young impulsive man he’d been was gone forever. But he was glad that he was back.

He thought he needed to be a little impulsive if he was going to find the right path forward for himself and for Gastrophile.

He had an idea of a seasoning to add to the dish and turned away from Staci and returned to his station. Cooking with renewed enthusiasm, when he was done and they both presented their dishes to the chef, he knew he’d prepared something different.

Something unique and something that he couldn’t have come up with if he hadn’t kissed Staci. It was as if she were a muse.

She was quiet and stole sideways looks at him, but he didn’t face her. He waited for the verdict on the dishes, unsurprised when his was pronounced the winner.

He felt a balm of satisfaction and realized that he owed Staci a big thank you, but more than that he wanted to keep cooking with her by his side. Earlier today he’d been resentful of having to listen to someone else in the kitchen but tonight he acknowledged that only with outside input could he move to the next level.

Chef Ramone stepped away again and Staci put her hands on her waist as she turned to him. “What was that about?”

“What?”

“Kissing me like that. I thought we were both professionals,” she said.

“We are,” he admitted. “That kiss had nothing to do with our cooking and everything to do with the fire burning between us. I thought it would be distracting …”

“Wasn’t it?” she asked. “It was for me.”

“No,” he said. “It wasn’t distracting. It was inspiring.”

He leaned over and kissed her again. “Thank you for that.”

She semi-glared at him and he felt her displeasure. “You’re welcome, I guess. I don’t want you doing that again.”

“I’m not making any promises,” he said.

STACI KEPT HER DISTANCE from Remy for the ride home. She’d thought flirting with him would give her an edge and it had surprised her how easily he’d flipped the tactic on her. But as she watched him moving easily around the living room of the house and talking to the other competitors she knew there was more to it than that.

There was something about Remy that was shaking her to her core. She had to tread carefully. Where kissing her had spurred him and inspired him to make a creative and unique dish, it had floored her and made her put up something mediocre. She was lucky that tonight hadn’t been a judged cooking session that counted. She was lucky that it had merely been a learning experience. She wasn’t going to forget it either.

“How was it?” Vivian asked, coming up next to her and handing her a glass of wine.

Staci took a swallow of the dry white wine as she weighed what to say to Viv. They were roommates so the impulse to share what had happened was strong, but she also knew from watching these kinds of reality television shows that close personal relationships often backfired. Even friendships.

“It was fantastic,” she said. She also knew that she wasn’t going to ever say anything negative about anything.

“I knew it. I’m going to win the next challenge,” Vivian said.

“Are you?”

“Hell, yes. I wouldn’t mind being whisked away for a private dinner with dreamy Remy.”

“He might not be the runner up,” Staci warned.

“Why? Did he show you some weaknesses tonight?” Vivian asked.

No, she thought. She’d shown herself some weaknesses and she knew that she had to figure out how to turn that into a strength. She could do it. She just had to remember … what? She had no idea how to handle Remy and she knew it.

She’d known it from the moment she’d crashed into his arms in the elevator. He rattled her and she’d thought that by being her usual bold self she could gain the upper hand, but he’d turned that against her. How had he known that would work? But she thought maybe he hadn’t known for sure and had only chanced upon … wait, a second, she thought. He didn’t realize he’d thrown her. He’d been too engrossed in what had been going on with himself.

She had to remember how her grandmother had admonished her many times when she’d been growing up. Not everything was about her.

“So?”

“Sorry, Viv. He’s a great chef and it’s going to take a lot of skill to beat him,” she said. “He took the chef’s dish and made it taste even better. You know that’s saying a lot.”

“Dang. Well, I will tell you that Dan doesn’t have any butchering skills. He made a mess of the fish tonight. He couldn’t get a steak out of a salmon. I mean that’s first year skills, right?” Vivian asked.

“Yes, it is. But he did make that rub that Lorenz liked. We might have to watch out for his flavors.”

“True. I’m ready for the individual challenges but the team ones worry me,” she admitted.

“Me, too,” Staci said. “I hate having to depend on anyone other than myself.”

They chatted a while longer about the competition until slowly everyone got ready for bed. Vivian put in her iPod headphones and switched off her light. She drifted off to sleep a little after midnight, but Staci was still wide awake.

Questions ran through her head and images of the dishes she’d eaten that night flashed through her mind. She took her journal and got out of bed. Pulling on a sweatshirt, she then walked through the quiet house to the deck that overlooked the ocean. The moon was full, lending some light to the evening and she sat down on one of the padded deck chairs, letting the soothing sound of the ocean ease her confusion.

She opened her notebook and started writing about what she’d eaten and cooked that night. She wasn’t too surprised to see that Remy featured in her notes. She focused on him, finding the part that made sense and the many things that didn’t. Her sauce had been her downfall. Kissing him … no, that had been the thing that had knocked her off her game. Until that moment she’d been fine.

She’d teased him and it had backfired. But only because she hadn’t been prepared for him to be as bold as she had been. And that had been a mistake she wouldn’t make again.

“Can I join you?”

She glanced around to see Remy standing in the doorway. He wore a pair of faded jeans and a long sleeved black t-shirt that molded his upper body. He held a mug in his hand and had bare feet.

She nodded and gestured toward the chair next to her.

He sat down, leaning against the back of the lounge chair and saying nothing for a long minute or two. He sipped his hot drink and she felt that he was toying with her, but when she looked over at him she saw he wasn’t.

Not everything is about you, she reminded herself again.

“Why can’t you sleep?” she asked.

“Quinn snores,” he said. “But I’m too restless from cooking tonight. If I was home I’d be in the kitchen trying all the different dishes that are in my head.”

“Same here. It was inspiring to see what Chef Ramone had done. I mean he started from really humble roots.”

“Yes, he did. My grandfather says all good cooking comes from the heart,” Remy said.

“Was that what inspired you tonight? I’ve never tasted that combination of spices before.”

He shrugged and took another sip from his mug. “I think I was inspired by something a little lower than my heart.”

That startled her and she stared across the space between them trying to ascertain if he was telling the truth or not. And she saw in his eyes that he was. He wanted her.

She put down her notebook, stood up and moved over to sit facing him.

“Are you trying to say that your groin inspired the dish?” she asked, putting her hands against the back of the chair on either side of his face.

“Yes, I am. There was something fiery in that kiss I stole from you,” he said. “My dish was a pale imitation of it.” He leaned up, tunneling his fingers through her hair and drawing her head down to his and this time when their lips met, she opened her mouth over his, running her tongue along the seam of his lips before thrusting it teasingly into his mouth.

He moaned, angling his head to the right to deepen their kiss. His hands slid down her shoulders to her waist and he drew her closer to him. She straddled his lap, tried to taste more of him. God, he was addicting.

And addictions seldom were a good thing, she tried to remind herself but for the moment, logic wasn’t in control and she wanted more of the passion Remy inspired.

4

A HOT WOMAN IN HIS LAP wasn’t what he’d anticipated tonight but to be honest there was nothing he wanted more. He was high on the exhilaration of the dish he’d created. He felt as if everything inside of him had been pushing toward this interlude. He didn’t have all the answers he’d been seeking but thanks in part to Staci he’d found a few of them.

Sliding his arms up and down her back, she shifted to accommodate him, her hands still framing his face. Her fingers were delicate and cool against his beard-stubbled chin; he rubbed his face against her hands breaking the contact with her mouth.

She exhaled a long drawn out sigh as she shifted her weight to settle back on her ankles.

“What am I going to do with you?” she asked.

But he could tell she wasn’t really expecting an answer from him. It was more of a question that he’d bet she wasn’t even aware she’d muttered out loud. He smoothed his hands over her back, she felt so ethereal in his arms. Like the fairies his little sister collected when they’d been children. Staci didn’t belong in this world, yet there was something very real about her.

He felt like the wrong move would send her skittering back into the house and into a permanent retreat.

He wasn’t much for being tentative. It went against his hot-blooded Cajun nature. But he was willing to do what was necessary to keep Staci here tonight. He needed her. He wasn’t sure how or why but he knew that she’d inspired him tonight and he wanted to keep that energy going.

“Kiss me again,” he said as the breeze off the Pacific stirred around them.

She tipped her head to the side. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

“Hell, yes, I’m a guy after all.”

She smiled at him but the expression didn’t reach her eyes and he sensed there was a feeling of sadness in her. He remembered the boy she’d mentioned who’d believed he’d been in love with her.

Remy wanted to know more about Staci. He needed to, yet at the same time he recognized that if he was going to win, and prove to himself what needed proving, he couldn’t let her be the first one to make him back down from a challenge.

Yet that very action was impossible. There had been other women in his life but none of them had ever inspired him to cook the way he had tonight. There was no denying it. He could only hope that he’d be able to control his need for Staci. He knew that men who played with fire did get burned.

“But you’d also like it because we’re competitors and you saw the way that you threw me in the kitchen tonight,” she said.

He didn’t have to feign surprise. He genuinely had no idea that their embrace had rattled her. But now that he did, he filed that information away for later. “No, I didn’t.”

“Truly?” she asked, tracing her fingers along his five o’clock shadow.

He closed his eyes and tipped his head to the side enjoying her touch as sensation spread throughout his body. His blood seemed to flow heavier in his veins before pooling between his legs. His erection hardened and he almost canted his hips forward.

“Yes. I was inspired by our kiss. There was something so hot in that embrace with you I thought I’d explode right there in Chef Ramone’s kitchen but then I channeled it into the dish … I’ve never done that before. I always cook from a place of history. Dishes made the way they’ve always been made.”

“Why?” she asked, running her hands down his neck and over his shoulders and warmth started to flow through him. Not unlike what he’d felt earlier in Ramone’s kitchen. This woman—Staci—made him feel things that he knew would complement their situation. He should put her from his lap and walk away … but he knew he wasn’t going to do that.

He took her wrist and drew her hand lower, rubbing it over his chest and pectorals. Her hands were small and petite as she was. Staci called to the wildness in his soul and he was powerless to ignore it. He wanted her, but more than that, he wanted to be the man who chased the shadows from her eyes.

She stretched her fingers out and then he felt the bite of her nails through the fabric of his shirt.

He reached around her, she was as hot as the spiciest pepper in his garden and one taste was simply not enough.

He held her hips, bringing her down into contact with his erection. She sighed. The sound of his name on her lips made him shudder. He liked it. He wanted to hear it again when she was breathy and on the cusp of pleasure.

He thrust up against her as her fingers continued to caress him. How he wanted this woman.

Tonight, with only the moon and the sea as his witnesses, he felt free to give in to his desires. He needed to claim her—his muse. He tangled one hand in her short hair and drew her mouth back to his. Her kisses were addictive and he was hungry for more of them. He rubbed his lips over hers until her mouth parted and he slipped his tongue inside her mouth. He was desperate to find that elusive taste that had so intrigued him earlier.

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